


Measure Twice, Cut Once

by NellieOleson



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2020-11-29 07:07:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20959340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NellieOleson/pseuds/NellieOleson
Summary: It all started with the garbage disposal.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> there was a tumblr post about how there weren't enough contractor AU fics in life. so here we are.

** June 1995:**

  
  


The shades in the living room were drawn tight against an outside light Jack wasn’t even sure existed. He rearranged the empty bottles on the table in front of him, grouping them in sets, trying to measure the passage of time. Had he been here for hours or days? Did it even matter? 

He didn’t hear Sara come down the stairs and only noticed her when she sat on the couch, closer to him than she’d been in weeks. The wall she’d built since Charlie died wasn’t meant to accommodate him. Not that he blamed her. He’d built his own wall, after all, painstakingly constructed from empty bottles and held together with a crushing sense of despair. 

He looked over at her, studying her face like he hadn’t seen her in days. Maybe he hadn’t. 

Time was different now. 

Each day seemed longer than the one it followed, and all of them passed with an agonizing slowness while he replayed the day his son shot himself over and over and over. Mostly he relived the actual events, every terrible detail crisp and bright. Sometimes he reimagined the day, changing little things, trying to decide what he could have done differently. 

All those decisions he’d made, big and small, steering him along to this moment. 

Sara stared at the bottles with him for awhile then picked up his hand. She hadn’t touched him since the funeral. Her hand was cool and dry, her grip perfunctory. 

“You can’t go on like this, Jack.” She struggled with the words, and the darker part of Jack’s mind told him that she was forcing herself to care. That she might be happier if he walked out the front door and never came back. “You need to talk to someone.”

Sara had a close network of friends and family that she’d built out of necessity because Jack was deployed more often than not. It was a support system he couldn’t tap into. Not when he could see the blame and the horror reflected back from their eyes.

Jack wanted to tell her not to worry. He didn’t need to talk to someone. To  _ get through it _ . Because with each passing day he became less and less sure that he wanted to wake up to see the next. 

The police had returned his gun. Because it was  _ an accident _ . Jack had accidentally left his gun unsecured and Charlie had accidentally found it and had accidentally aimed it at himself and had accidentally pulled the trigger.

_ An accident _ . 

“Charlie wouldn’t have wanted this.”

Hearing Sara say that drives home the fact that Charlie will never have the chance to want anything at all anymore. The grief and anger and guilt he’d been keeping at bay with too much alcohol came crashing down all at once. He cried in a way he hadn’t let himself since he was a boy, sobbing into Sara’s shoulder while she held him tight. 

When she found a local grief support group, Jack went with her and sat quietly on his metal folding chair. He didn’t participate, not that first time, but he listened. He did it for Sara, for Charlie. Not for himself. That didn’t come until much later.

It was one of those moments, those small choices, that set his life on a different path. It wasn’t enough to save his marriage or his career, but it might have saved his life.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Feb 1998: **

  
  


"Beware the destroyers. That's what the message said.” 

“These are the coordinates the Goa'uld will launch their attack from.” Daniel held out a crumpled piece of yellow paper, gripping it tightly like he was afraid it would vanish and take with it the only physical proof he had to back up his story. “It's a warning.”

“Or so your vision foretells.” Teal’c was staring down at Daniel hard enough to make Sam uncomfortable. He looked ready to beat a different story out of Daniel.

“No.” Daniel’s voice pitched a little higher than normal. “It wasn't a vision, or a dream, or a hallucination. It was real. Now I know this is hard for you guys to believe. But I swear to you the whole time you thought I had disappeared on P3R-233, I was experiencing an alternate reality.” 

Sam was probably the only person in the room willing to entertain the existence of alternate realities, at least from a physics standpoint—and only a theoretical one. She decided it would be best to move the conversation along before Colonel Reynolds had Daniel dragged off to Doctor Fraiser, or before Teal’c dragged him off for some in-depth questioning. 

“When you were in this alternate reality, were there differences?” 

“Yes, ah, Teal'c was leading the attack on Earth.” Daniel’s eyebrows went up while he considered his next words. “I wasn't even part of the program.” He said that like he was still trying to figure out how the other version of the SGC had managed to turn the lights on without him. 

He looked over at Sam. “You were engaged.”

Sam frowned, worried that this hypothetical other version of herself hadn’t managed to get rid of Jonas. What a fucking nightmare that would be. She was getting mad just thinking about it. “Engaged? Engaged to who?”

Daniel looked alarmed at her tone, as if she were blaming him for her shitty taste in men. “The base commander.”

“I was engaged to General Hammond?” 

“No. Some other guy. General O’Neill? I didn’t catch his first name.”

Sam didn’t really pay much attention to his name, because all she could think was: “I’m allowed to date the base commander in another reality?” 

“I guess.” Daniel looked down at his crumpled paper, and Sam could tell he’d already lost interest in her alternate-reality engagement. “You were a civilian.”

Civilian? It felt like a dirty word. Sam’s whole identity was built around being an Air Force officer. She couldn’t imagine any version of herself that didn’t include it. 

“Everything about that is wrong.”


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 1: March, 2001

It all started with the garbage disposal. 

The poor thing had been crying for attention all week, groaning unpleasantly whenever Sam put it to work. On Friday morning it quit for good while she was shoving the crusts from the leftover pizza she’d eaten down its throat. She flipped the switch on and off a few times while bits of pizza crust floated to the surface, chased by a single air bubble. The bubble sat there, perfectly intact, and the crust bits gravitated to its edge, forming the worst accretion disc in the universe. 

The phone rang to remind Sam that she didn’t have time to be staring into the cesspool of her sink, even if it was trying to recreate the birth of a planet. She checked the caller ID to make sure it was just Daniel and let the machine pick up. Listening to a sleep deprived Daniel’s latest progress report wasn’t going to get her out of the house any faster.

It looked like the water was at least trying to go down the drain, so she left it and headed out the door. With any luck, she’d be home before anything too disgusting started to grow in her sink.

The thought of hiring someone else to fix it didn’t even cross her mind until she was standing at a gas pump ten minutes later. 

There was a truck at the pump in front of her with a dog head poking out the rear window and a hand-painted sign hanging from the tailgate. The dog whined every time Sam made eye contact with it, so she looked at the sign instead. She read it twice before realizing its implications. 

“Jack of all Trades, Master of a Few. No Job Too Small,” the sign declared. The ‘No’ was crossed off, replaced by ‘Some,’ a little ‘s’ added after job to keep it grammatically correct. The sign didn’t exactly inspire confidence—aside from the grammar—but it was just a garbage disposal. How hard could it be? 

Sam was at the pump long enough to fill her entire tank, and the owner of the truck still hadn’t come back. She passed the time she didn’t really have making faces at the dog and wondering what kind of person still went inside to pay for gas. She imagined him as the world’s oldest handyman, eschewing modern payment systems in favor of an all cash existence—all while wearing denim overalls and sporting a jaunty mustache and a pot belly.

The man who came back to the truck was none of those things. Maybe. It was possible he was eschewing modern payment systems in favor of an all cash existence; she couldn’t really tell that by looking at him. But the rest of her assumptions were completely off-base. He was tall and lanky with some non-jaunty scruff on his face, and his denim stopped at his waist.

Sam was so thrown off by his appearance that she almost let him get away. He was opening his door when she finally managed to say something.

“Excuse me.” She checked her watch again. If this took more than three minutes, she was going to regret it. He stopped with his door half open and looked at her like he was trying to figure out if he knew her, to put her in context. Sam pointed to the sign on his tailgate. “You’re a contractor?” 

“Oh, yeah. That.” He stepped back from his door, and the dog took that as an invitation to escape its four-wheeled crate. It bounded over to Sam on its long legs and sat in front of her doing a full body wag. The man shook his head. “Sorry. She loves new people. And old people. Just… people.”

“It’s ok.” Sam looked down at the dog and the dog looked back with big brown eyes that matched her fur and as much of a smile as a dog could pull off. Her tongue was hanging out the side of her mouth like it was too big for her head. “Can I pet her?” 

“You won’t get rid of her until you do.”

The dog was soft and leaned into Sam’s hand wherever she put it. Sam struggled to remember the last time she got to pet a dog. It was always jarring when she was confronted with the simple things in life she missed out on. 

“What’s her name?”

“Noodle. She’s my silent partner.” The man walked over and held out his hand. “I’m Jack.” Sam shook his hand and wondered if that was his real name. It seemed too convenient. 

“Of all trades?” 

He looked at the sign like it had personally wronged him at some point. “No. Not really. I don’t do anything electrical.” There was a very clear, but unspoken, ‘anymore’ at the end of that sentence. 

Sam checked her watch again, resigned to the fact that she was going to be late. She hated being late, but the Air Force owed her quite a bit of leeway for all the times she spent too many days and nights on base or off-world. 

“What about garbage disposals? Can you replace one?” Noodle nudged Sam’s hand with her nose again, so Sam scritched her ears some more. The dog had nice ears, soft and velvety with long wavy bits on the end. 

“As long as it’s not hardwired.”

Sam had no idea if it was hardwired. She’d never had occasion to look. “I can check when I get home,” she said. “Do you have a card?”

“No.” He pulled a small notebook out of his back pocket, and Sam waited while he wrote his phone number on it. 

She glanced at it before shoving it in her pocket, wondering if it was a bad sign that he didn’t have real business cards. “Thanks.” 

“No problem.” He patted his thigh and Noodle gave Sam’s hand a final lick before trotting to his side. She hopped in the truck and her head popped out the rear window a moment later. 

**********

Daniel caught up with her in the commissary while she was finishing a cup of bad coffee and a stack of worse mission reports. 

He plopped down on the other side of the table and looked at her like she was the best thing he’d seen all day. It would have been flattering if she didn’t know he’d been holed up in his office since yesterday. It was likely she was the _only_ thing he’d seen all day.

“Hey, Sam.”

“Hey.”

“Everything all right? I tried to call you this morning.”

They both knew she ignored his call on purpose, so Sam didn’t bother commenting on that. Instead, she said, “I’m thinking of hiring someone to install a garbage disposal. Is that wrong?”

“I don’t even change my own light bulbs.”

Sam wanted that to be a joke but knew it wasn’t. “How do you live with yourself?”

Daniel shrugged and picked up a folder from her pile. “I have better things to do. And honestly, the Air Force gives me a lot of money that I don’t have time to spend.” He flipped through the report while he talked and frowned at it. “I pay the neighbor’s son to take out my trash.” 

“You do not.” 

“Sure I do. I just leave it outside my door, and he takes it to the dumpster.” Daniel made little walking motions with his fingers.

Sam plucked the report from Daniel’s hands and put it back in the pile. “I can’t talk to you,” she told him. 

*****

The easy mission they had planned for that day turned into a weeklong adventure in a Goa’uld holding cell. Sam forgot all about the handyman and his dog and his homemade sign until she got home and came face-to-face with the stratified rings of dried food flecks circling the inside of her sink. 

“Fuck.” She turned the faucet on just to make sure things hadn’t worked themselves out while she was gone. A final gasp of bubbles rose up from the drain, bursting on the surface of the still water. 

She could have learned to live without the garbage disposal, but the non-draining water was going to be a problem. Still, she hated herself a little bit as she dug the paper out from the pocket of the jeans she’d first put on a week ago. 

His writing was neat and easy to read, adding to her list of preconceived notions he hadn’t lived up to. She examined it while she waited for his answering service to pick up.

“Hello?”

It took her a moment to get her bearings when she realized he’d given her his home number. 

“Hi,” she said. “Sorry for calling so late. This is Sam Carter. I talked to you about replacing my garbage disposal? Like a week ago. At the gas station?”

“I remember.”

“Great.” She paced around the room trying to calculate how long she could live without a fully functioning kitchen. “Can you do it?”

There was a long pause, and she could hear his dog whining in the background. “Hold on a second.” The line went quiet again, and Sam spent the awkward silence wondering how he ever got any business at all. “Sorry. Noodle had to go out.“

“Oh.”

“Did you check to see if it’s hardwired?”

Fuck. She opened the cabinet and looked under the sink, relieved to see the cord from the disposal plugged into an outlet on the wall. “It’s not. Can I make an appointment?”

“Appointments are good.”

She thought hard about when she’d actually be home during ‘normal business hours.’ It could be a day or it could be a month. Maybe this was the reason she’d never hired a handyman before. “How about Tuesday?” It seemed as good a day as any. 

“Long time to go without a garbage disposal.”

It was a long time. If it got too tedious, she could always stay on base. “I know.”

“How about now?” 

“Now?” It was 8:00pm on a Saturday, way too late for any normal handyman to make a house call. 

“Sure. Noodle and I can swing by Home Depot and pick one up. Shouldn’t take more than an hour to put it in.”

“Wow, that’s—” It was really accommodating, she thought, and also kind of weird. But she didn’t want to be stuck in her base quarters after spending a week in captivity. “That would be great actually.” 

“Do you know what size you want?”

Sam had no idea what size garbage disposal she wanted. She thought about it until she realized she also had no idea how they were measured. 

“The biggest one.”


	3. Chapter 3

Jack and Noodle were settling in for their usual Saturday night festivities when the woman from the gas station finally called. He’d assumed, after a few days, that she’d found someone else to replace her garbage disposal. Someone with a better sign. Maybe someone with actual business cards. 

Nobody had ever hired him off the street before. What little business he had was all word of mouth—a small but loyal customer base of mostly old ladies who thought he was _such a nice young man._

He listened to himself volunteering to drop everything so he could spend his evening squeezed into a sink cabinet and wondered why he was doing it. It was something he might have done for one of his regular customers, or for something more urgent—like a tree falling through a roof or a flooded basement. 

This was neither of those things, but he found himself putting shoes on just the same. He opened the back door after setting the phone down, and Noodle came bounding through at top speed. She ran three laps around the living room before flopping dramatically onto the carpet. 

“Come on,” he told her. “We have some new Saturday night plans.” Some plans that involved the company of a human under the age of sixty. What did the young people even talk about these days? 

Noodle raced up the stairs when he grabbed his keys, just as excited to be going somewhere as she’d been to not be going somewhere. He wondered sometimes exactly what was going on in her brain.

The directions she’d given him led to a quiet street of small Craftsman houses near a park that he and Noodle had been to several times. He parked in front of her house and double-checked the address before rolling the windows down a few inches. It wasn’t hot, but Noodle would appreciate the fresh air. 

“You stay here,” he told her. She looked at him like he was stupid, and Jack ruffled her ears before getting out of the truck. 

Noodle started barking before he made it to the porch. 

The sound echoed through the neighborhood, and more than one porch light came on. Sam Carter opened her front door and stepped outside while Jack was still standing on the sidewalk, stuck between his noisy dog and his newest customer.

“Sorry. She’s usually quiet. I think she recognizes the park.”

He looked back at Noodle, and now she was trying to squeeze her whole face out through the three-inch gap in the window. When she noticed they were both paying attention to her, she started to howl like the world was ending. Jack felt bad for bringing so much noise to Sam Carter’s sleepy little street. 

Sam was more sympathetic about Noodle’s plight. “Is she going to be okay? You don’t have to leave her in the truck.”

“Are you sure?” He was willing to take her home if she wouldn’t quiet down in the truck.

“Yeah. I don’t get to pet dogs often enough.”

He wondered at that while he walked back out to the street. It seemed like such a sad commentary on her life. Jack had adopted Noodle as soon as his own life had settled down enough to accommodate a dog. She was his best company most days.

Noodle shot out of the truck when he opened the door. She raced up the walkway, skidded to a stop and threw herself into a sit at the threshold of Sam’s house. Jack caught up with her a moment later because he only had the two legs. 

They both stared at Sam. 

“You have to invite her in. It’s the most useful thing she knows.” 

Sam stepped inside and called the dog. Jack extended the invitation to himself, and he and Noodle followed her to the kitchen at the back of the house. 

“Nice house.”

Sam looked around, wearing a slight frown. “My dad made me take it.”

It was an odd comment and Jack didn’t know what to say to it, so he just nodded before setting his bucket of tools in front of the sink. “I’m going to grab the disposal from the truck.”

Noodle opted to wait inside and suck up all the attention she could get while Jack went out to the truck. She was lying on her back in front of Sam’s feet with her tongue hanging out and her tail sweeping the floor when he walked back into the kitchen. 

“I think she likes you.”

Sam crouched down and rubbed Noodle’s belly. “She seems like the kind of dog that likes everyone.”

“Usually.” 

Sam waved her free hand toward the sink. “Sorry it’s so gross. I didn’t want to run the water.”

“I’ll mostly be dealing with the bottom side.” He thought about her slowly-draining garbage disposal for a moment and realized that the crusty sink basin was probably the least disgusting thing he’d have to deal with. The sink trap was not going to be pleasant. Maybe he should take plumbing off his list of things he was willing to do for money.

The sink was wide enough to make the cabinet less cramped than it could have been. Jack shoved himself inside and looked around to see if maybe her disposal was just stuck and not actually broken. The clip on the bottom that should have held an allen wrench was empty. 

“Did you try freeing it up manually?” 

She didn’t answer him right away, and Jack was pretty sure her next words were not entirely true. 

“That didn’t work.”

“Really? It usually does.” He turned his head so he could see her face. She was sitting on the floor now with her back against the island. Her cheeks were just a little pink and she shrugged when she saw him looking at her. 

“Okay, I didn’t try that. I didn’t even know it was an option.” Noodle rolled over and put a paw on Sam’s knee, letting her know that she was forgiven for lying. 

“It’s a useful thing to know.” Her old disposal looked too small and had probably been in the kitchen since the house was built. Even if freeing it up manually worked this time, it was probably on its last legs. Replacing it was the better long-term solution.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. 

Sam got up when he started disconnecting everything, and Jack assumed she had something more important to do than stare at his legs. He was wrong because she came back with snacks and sat down like she was at some weird live performance show.

“Is Noodle allowed to have popcorn?”

“Make her work for it.” Jack just made that up. He often gave Noodle her own bowl when they watched hockey. She was very polite about it. 

He listened to Sam put his dog through her paces while he disassembled the drain. She started off with simple stuff. Sit. Down. Sit again. Shake. Other paw. Jack glanced out to see if Noodle got that one. Not only did she switch paws, she stayed sitting up with both of them in the air. 

“Roll over.”

Jack could hear Noodle rolling on the floor. Rolling over was something she really excelled at.

“Other way.” Noodle complied with that one too.

“Play dead.” 

That command was followed by a long beat of silence. Jack looked out again to see Noodle sitting in front of Sam with a confused dog expression. Sam tilted her head to match then said ‘bang’ and pretended to shoot Noodle with a finger gun. Noodle fell over instantly and with a lot of flair. 

“I didn’t know she knew that.”

“She’s smart.”

“Too smart.” Jack went back to work and wondered what other cool things his dog might know. Jack didn’t have all the details of her previous life, but it was clear someone had put some effort into training her at one point. Maybe he could hire her to do the electrical work he always passed on.

“Fetch.” 

The room was too small for fetch and the popcorn landed near Jack’s legs. Noodle ran over to get it then stuck her cold wet nose under his shirt just in case there was another piece hiding in there. 

Her timing was perfect enough to make him flinch while taking the trap off and he dumped it all over himself. “Shit.”

Sam was staring at him—a piece of popcorn halfway to her mouth. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry. Do you want a towel?”

“That would be great, thanks.” A shower and a clean shirt would also be great but that would have to wait.

Noodle licked his stomach when Sam left because even she recognized that he needed to be cleaned up. “Ugh. No.” He tried to push her face away, but she just licked his hand. “You are the worst plumbing assistant.”

Sam came back just in time to hear that comment and handed him a towel. She looked away when he pulled his shirt up to clean the dog slobber off of himself.

“Thanks.” Jack wiped at the front of his shirt. It was a lost cause so he sat the towel under the sink instead. At least it would keep his back dry. He disconnected the old disposal and pulled it out. 

Sam sat at the counter and watched as he unpacked the new disposal. It made the old one look like a cheap toy. “You can put a whole chicken carcass down this thing.”

“Is that what the commercials say?”

“No, really. I’ve done it.” Several times, always to Noodle’s dismay. 

“Okay.” 

Jack mounted the new disposal and added a new drain and trap. Plumbing was a lot more pleasant when you were dealing with non-disgusting parts. 

He extricated himself as gracefully as he could manage when he was done and put his tools back in the bucket. Noodle recognized his end of work ritual and stood up to stretch like she’d been the one folded into a small space for the last hour. She poked her head inside the cabinet, looking over his work while he tested the disposal and drain connections. 

“Make sure to use cold water when you run it. Keeps the motor from overheating.”

“Oh. That might explain a few things.”

When he was satisfied that nothing was going to leak he closed the cabinet doors and sat Sam’s towel on the counter. “Looks good.”

Sam came over and stared down into the drain where the new garbage disposal looked the same as the old garbage disposal. “Yeah. Looks great.” She stepped back a bit and looked at his chest. “Sorry again about the water.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll dock Noodle’s pay for dry cleaning expenses.”

She looked at his ratty work shirt again and smiled. Jack picked up his bucket and wished he had another dumb comment to share. 

He was halfway to the front door when Sam stopped him. 

“Don’t you want me to pay you?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Most of Jack’s customers liked to slip him money like they were sneaking cash to a grandchild. Sam probably wasn’t going to do that.

“Check okay?” she asked.

“Sure.” Jack had a whole collection of checks in his glove box because he hated going to the bank. They didn’t add up to much.

Sam left him and Noodle in the foyer while she went back for her checkbook and a pen. Noodle used the time to sniff everything in the room. The black combat boots, mixed in with the running shoes and sandals, held Noodle’s attention for a long time. Jack wondered how interesting they could really be. He’d noticed the Air Force decals on Sam’s car but figured there wasn’t anything going on inside Cheyenne Mountain that would be of much interest to a nosey dog.

Noodle was rubbing her face on the boots when Sam came back. “Who do I make it out to?”

“Jack O’Neill. Two Ls.”

“How much?”

“How about fifty for me, plus the cost of the disposal?” He pulled the receipt from his front pocket and tried to flatten it out a little before he handed it to her. “Here you go.”

Sam filled out the check and signed her name with a flourish. Jack made an effort to fold it neatly before putting it in his wallet. 

“Thanks again,” she said.

“Call me if you have any problems with it.” He waited a moment while Sam gave Noodle some last-minute attention, then headed out the door to his truck.

Noodle didn’t say much on the way home so Jack spent the time reflecting on his evening. Starting a handyman business hadn’t been his idea, and he did his best to keep it from becoming a success, but tonight he thought that maybe it wasn’t such a bad retirement plan after all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Actually, you *can* test drive a toilet.

It was a slow day at the SGC, which meant the mess hall was crowded, full of people taking advantage of the calm before the inevitable storm. 

Sam sat in the corner, tapping her pencil against the table, trying to decide if remodeling a home office was asking too much of a ‘handyman.’ Because what did that even mean? Was he just handy? Or was he also skilled? She added it anyway. It was just words on paper right now. Why shouldn’t she dream big?

The new garbage disposal was so much better than the old garbage disposal, she’d started looking around her house for other things to upgrade. Her dad hadn’t done anything outside essential maintenance the whole time he’d lived there. It would be nice to change some things up, to make the house feel more like her own. An extra pair of hands to do the actual work opened up a lot of opportunities, and Sam’s list of ideas grew more ambitious. 

She was so engrossed in her list and her Jell-O, she didn’t hear Daniel approach until it was too late. She would have closed her notebook if she’d had more time. There were a lot of other things she should be working on. Important things. Stargate-related things.

“Hey, Sam.” Daniel looked over her shoulder and pulled out the chair next to her. “What are you working on?”

She slid the notebook over. There was no point in trying to hide it now. “It’s a list of projects I want done around my house. I’m trying to prioritize them.”

“So I take it you’re on board with paying people to do your grunt work now?”

“I guess I am.” She thought again about the new garbage disposal. About how quiet it was, how powerful; she really liked that garbage disposal. “I put an entire chicken carcass down my garbage disposal last night.” 

“Wow, Sam. You sure know how to have a good time.”

“Really? You of all people?” 

“What? I have fun.” Daniel looked like he was trying hard to think of some of this fun he claimed to be having. He stared down at her list and started reading things off. “Home office. Fix lock on sliding door. Paint everything. Tear down old shed—that’s a good one.” 

The shed had been in the back corner of her lot long enough to develop a precarious lean, and her team had a pool going for the date it would finally keel over. It would be nice to free up that corner, but a small part of her was going to miss the shed. It was the only thing in her yard with any kind of personality.

“Don’t forget about the toilet in your guest bathroom that’s always running,” said Daniel.

“Right. I did forget about that.” It was something Daniel mentioned every time he had to use it. She added it to her list, right at the top, so she wouldn’t have to listen to his diatribe about wasted water ever again. “Sorry, home office,” she told the list. 

Teal’c made his way to their table while she was writing, looking for all the world like he owned the entire room and they were all just houseguests. 

“Hey, Teal’c.” Daniel slid a chair out with his foot. 

“Daniel Jackson. Major Carter.” Teal’c nodded at both of them and Sam smiled, grateful all over again that they’d found him and made him part of their weird little family. 

“We’re making a list of home improvement projects for Sam’s new handyman,” Daniel told him. Sam wondered how it was possible for everything in her life to become a group project.

Sam gave Teal’c a minute to try and work out what a handyman was. For all his skill with languages, Daniel wasn’t very good at recognizing phrases Teal’c wouldn’t understand.

“It’s someone you can pay to work on your house. To fix things, or make improvements.” Teal’c had lived in his quarters for a long time before he’d done anything to personalize the space. Now it was one of the most warm and relaxing rooms on base, and Sam wondered what he’d be doing if he hadn’t been born a Jaffa. He was a good warrior, but maybe interior design was his real calling.

“I see.” Teal’c thought for a moment, his head slightly tilted to the contemplative angle. “Do these handy men also do work outside a home?”

“Like yard work? Sure.” He generally didn’t ask questions just to hear himself talk, and she was curious about what he had in mind.

“Perhaps you should consider enlarging your outdoor cooking area.”

Sam’s deck was more than adequate for a small group, but her house had become the defacto gathering place for her team, Janet, and Cassie. She’d been hoping someone else would volunteer their own house, but it had been 5 years and maybe it was time to give up on that dream. 

“That’s a good idea, Teal’c.” 

She planned on calling the handyman at the end of the week, but then they ran a wormhole through a sun and Cassie started destroying stuff with her brain.

It was a long couple of months and a lot of wasted water before Sam had a chance to call him.

***

This time, Jack showed up too early in the day instead of too late. Sam had barely finished her breakfast when the doorbell rang. She let him and Noodle inside, and Noodle immediately coveted the piece of toast Sam was holding. 

Noodle flopped down in front of Sam and wiggled her entire body, trying hard to lure Sam’s hand and toast down to her level. Sam rubbed Noodle’s belly with her foot instead. 

“I think she remembers me.”

“She remembers your popcorn.”

Noodle jumped up and sat perfectly in front of Jack. He just shook his head. “No. There is no popcorn. I wasn’t even talking to you.”

Sam showed Jack to the bathroom and watched him work from the doorway for a few minutes. She excused herself when she realized she was just standing there for no reason and went to her office to catch up on some reading. Noodle followed her, no doubt hoping more toast would appear.

Jack wandered by fifteen minutes later and knocked on the wall next to the door. 

“Looks like you need a new flapper.”

He had everything that was supposed to live inside the toilet tank wrapped in an old towel. Sam had no idea which part was the flapper. “That’s what I thought.” 

“I’m going to run to the hardware store.” 

“Okay.” 

“Come on, Noodle.” Noodle lifted her head off Sam’s foot when he patted his leg, but she didn’t get up. 

“She can stay.” Sam reached down and ruffled Noodle’s ear. “If you don’t mind.”

Jack glared at his dog. “Traitor.” 

“Don’t listen to him,” Sam told Noodle when she heard the front door close. “You’re allowed to see other people.”

She was barely back into the article she’d been reading when someone rang her doorbell. At this rate, it was going to take her a month to finish it. Noodle followed her to the door and pranced around the foyer like a dog that was used to finding great things on the other side of every door in the universe. Sam looked out the side window and it was just Jack, standing on her porch like he hadn’t been in her house five minutes ago. Noodle was going to be disappointed.

“Hey,” he said when she opened the door. “Can I use your phone?”

“Of course.” She stepped back to let him in. Noodle sniffed his shoes. “Is something wrong.”

“Truck won’t start.”

Sam looked past him to the big, green truck sitting in front of her house with its hood up like it was yelling for help. It didn’t look old enough to be leaving him stranded.

“Do you want me to look at it?” Combustion engines were generally easier to deal with than Stargates and probably more fun to deal with than plumbing. 

“Yeah. Sure. If you don’t mind.”

He tossed her the keys when they got to the curb and opened the door for her. Sam took a moment to appreciate the fact that he hadn’t questioned her ability to help with his truck—especially after she’d done nothing but eat popcorn and read while he fixed simple appliances in her house. Maybe he was humoring her.

He watched while she climbed into the driver’s seat and slid the key into the ignition. The warning lights and gauges seemed fine, but when she turned the key all the way, the engine didn’t even attempt to start. She closed her eyes and listened while she held the key for a moment.

“I think it’s your starter.” She could hear the relay clicking, but it wasn’t engaging the flywheel at all.

“Makes sense since it won’t start.” Jack rubbed the back of his head and looked down the street, assessing his options. “I guess I should call a tow truck.” 

“I’m not going to let you have this thing towed over a bad starter.” Especially on a Sunday. She’d probably have it fixed before anyone with a tow truck even showed up. “Hold on.” 

She went over to her own car and pulled a small toolbox out of the trunk. It didn’t have anything more complicated than an adjustable wrench in it, but the only thing she wanted was a hammer. 

“Try it again when I’m under it.” His truck sat high, and she slid underneath easily enough. It only took a few taps on the back of the starter to get it started. 

Jack gave her a hand up and she brushed all the road crud off herself. 

“I can’t believe you fixed my truck with a hammer. That never works for me.”

“Don’t get too excited. It’s just going to happen again.” She thought about the day she had planned and decided there was nothing on her list that couldn’t be put off another day. “If you have time, I can replace that starter for you.” It was an easy job. Starters were pretty much plug and play. 

“Well, I don’t know. I’m supposed to be fixing a toilet for a new client.”

“I’m sure she’ll understand.” Sam picked a piece of gravel from the back of her elbow. “Let’s take my car. I don’t want to have to crawl under this thing every time you need to start it.”

Jack gave her vintage Volvo a dubious look. “I’m not sure I’ll fit in your car.”

Sam crammed Noodle in the backseat and Jack in the front. Noodle seemed to like the car a lot more than Jack and spent the whole drive with her face in between the front seats, waving her wet dog breath back and forth. 

The starter was a common part on a popular truck, and the first NAPA they stopped at had it in stock. Sam was more accustomed to visiting four or five different parts stores and still going home empty handed. She watched Jack pay for his starter and shook her head. He had no idea how lucky he was.

“I forgot how easy it was to work on normal cars,” she told him. “It takes me weeks to hunt down parts for my Volvo.”

“Maybe you should get a car that isn’t older than you.”

Sam laughed. Next time she called him, she’d make sure her motorcycle was out. “Where’s the fun in that?”

***

They were making their way to the hardware store when Noodle started losing her mind in the back seat. Jack looked around the street like he spoke her language. “Shit,” he said. “Can you pull over?” He hopped out before she had the car in park and jogged back down the sidewalk. 

Noodle had her face pressed against the back window and Sam couldn’t see anything in the rear view mirror. She waited impatiently until the passenger door opened again, and Jack climbed back into his seat with an extra-small, extra dog. It was squirming in his lap, trying hard to lick his face. 

“Do you two know each other?”

“Yeah. As a matter of fact, we do.”

“Oh.” It wasn’t the answer she’d been expecting. 

“Do you mind making another stop?” 

She told him she didn’t mind, and Jack directed her to a small house one block over. The tiny dog hadn’t gotten very far from its home. 

They all got out this time and walked up the path to the front door, the overgrown landscaping on either side threatening to swallow their impromptu parade. Jack held the little dog and Sam held Noodle’s leash. 

It took a long time for someone to answer the door. Sam was about to ask if he was sure someone was home when the door cracked open. The tiny dog’s owner was an equally tiny old lady. She peeked out through the narrow space. 

“Ethel. It’s me, Jack.” The little dog barked in Jack’s face. “And also Poppy.”

Ethel pulled the door open and smiled. She looked like everyone’s grandmother and Sam wanted to hug her. 

“Oh, Poppy!” Ethel reached out and put her frail hands on either side of Poppy’s face. “I let him out this morning and he just never came back. I think there must be a hole in the fence.” 

Jack put Poppy down and he ran into the house looking for all the world like he’d learned his lesson and would never leave the yard again. 

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t want to bother you on the weekend.” Now Ethel reached up and put her frail hands on either side of Jack’s face. “I know how hard you work.” Sam watched the whole exchange, completely amused. Everything about the situation felt like the plot of a Hallmark movie. 

“You know I always have time for you and Poppy.” Jack took Ethel’s arm and walked inside. “Come on, let’s go look at that fence.”

Sam sat on the back porch with Ethel while Jack searched for loose boards. The yard, like everything else, was small and it didn’t take long for him to find the breach. Noodle watched Jack work like quality control was in her job description while Poppy ran in circles around her, trying to lure her into a game of chase. 

Ethel took advantage of her captive audience and talked non-stop. By the time Jack had the yard secured, Sam had learned more about Ethel than she knew about her own grandmother. 

Ethel gave Jack a hug when he finished. Then she dug a handful of coins and three pieces of hard candy from her purse. She pressed the money and candy into Jack’s hand and he accepted it like it was the exact payment he’d been expecting.

Sam got hugged next. “It was nice to meet you, young lady.” 

“You too,” she told Ethel. And it was. Hanging out on Ethel’s porch had been a lot more pleasant than hanging out on her own porch alone would have been.

Noodle got a pat on the head instead of a hug. She didn’t seem to mind. “You take good care of these kids, Noodle.” Noodle licked Ethel’s hand, sealing her promise with a slobber pact. 

“You don’t make any money doing this, do you?” Sam asked when they got to the sidewalk.

Jack looked down at the coins in his hand and handed Sam a piece of candy. 

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

***

Sam had his starter replaced before he finished putting her toilet back together. 

“How are you done already?”

“Starters are easy.” She wanted to let him be impressed, but changing a starter wasn’t much more work than changing a spark plug. The hardest part had been cleaning the grease off her hands. 

“Why am I fixing stuff in your house?” 

“Why aren’t you fixing your own truck?”

“Fair enough.” He reached down and turned the water back on, and they both watched the tank fill up like it was interesting. The water shut off when it reached the top. A good sign as far as Sam was concerned. They stared at the quiet toilet some more, then Jack flushed it, and they watched it fill up again. 

“I like working on cars,” she told him, because staring at the toilet had gotten uncomfortable. “You can’t take garbage disposals and toilets out for a test drive.” Jack stared at his feet for a bit instead, and Sam regretted mentioning taking the toilet for a test drive. 

He put the top back on the tank when it was full then looked at her with enough of a smile to get her attention. “Do you want to take my truck out for a test drive?”

She wondered for a moment if he was flirting with her. The intensity of her job kept her out of practice with things like that. There weren’t very many people in her day to day life who would dare to flirt with her. He looked more sincere than hopeful, and she decided he was just asking her an honest question. 

“Not this time.” She hadn’t done anything that would warrant it, and she was sure his truck lacked the speed and tight handling that made driving fun. “All it really needed was a test start.” 

“Well, I guess I owe you.” 

“I guess so.”


End file.
